Black-Eared Squirrel

Not a new species of squirrel, but a genus

For my second summer at the Smithsonian I worked in the Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics Lab. Now I’m a little embarrassed that I went over to the dark side, or the mammal side, for this project. The justification I properly make, is that working on genomes is no different for mammals for birds, or even for plants! I got to learn genetic data software for gene alignment, transcription, concatenation, phylogenetic tree construction, and model running. I was also exposed to advanced ancient DNA extraction and sequencing! Following my work with Missy Roberts on her dissertation, we believe we have discovered not a new species of squirrel, but a Genus. Of course I was the number cruncher, but I did so happily especially because Missy was so nice to share her time and experience with me.

Missy continues to be a professional contact and an advocate, even if it means returning to the birds.